When I attended my first spring hearing in Wisconsin in the late 1980s, votes were cast by raising a hand.

If you were in a minority on an issue, you could feel like an unwelcome spotlight was shined on you as you waited for your input to be counted. You might even have had an unkind word or dirty stare directed at you.

This much was clear: It didn't rise to the highest standards of democratic process.

But the Wisconsin Conservation Congress and Department of Natural Resources phased in a big improvement over the coming decades when paper ballots and pencils were issued to spring hearings voters.

The results were tabulated using machines very similar to those used in political elections.

Not only did the process provide privacy, it produced results from all 72 counties more quickly.

But there has long been another unsatisfactory aspect to the spring hearings process – low turnout.

The Wisconsin Conservation Congress will allow online voting at the 2019 spring hearings. It will ...more

The Wisconsin Conservation Congress will allow online voting at the 2019 spring hearings. It will be the first time such remote participation will be used by the organization in its 85-year history.

Paul A. Smith

In recent years, statewide attendance at the meetings has ranged from about 5,000 to 7,000, a small fraction of the more than 1 million licensed anglers and about 5.3 million people who reside in the state.

Record attendance of 29,938 was recorded in 2000, the year of the vote on a mourning dove hunting proposal.

The gatherings, formally called the Department of Natural Resources Spring Hearings and Wisconsin Conservation Congress County Meetings, are held annually to gauge public support on conservation and environmental issues as well as elect local WCC delegates.

The congress is established in state statute as a public advisory body to the DNR and Natural Resources Board.

So the WCC and DNR have been looking for a way to get more input from more of the public.

For perhaps a decade, some have suggested online voting. For at least that long, others have criticized and feared such a move.

The debate has been settled.

At the 2018 WCC convention held last week in Green Bay, the group voted by an overwhelming margin to institute online voting for the 2019 spring hearings.

Sixty-two county delegations voted for online voting and just two were against it, said WCC chair Larry Bonde of Kiel.

The move was based largely on work conducted by the WCC's Online Voting Exploratory Committee.

The committee was formed in 2017. It was chaired by Marc Schultz, a WCC delegate fromf Brice Prairie, and included WCC delegates John Rennpferd of South Milwaukee and Paul Reith of Madison, as well as Gary Zimmer of the Natural Resources Board, and DNR employees Ben Beardmore, Kimberly Currie, Chandra Harvey, Scott Loomans, Michael Schmit and Kari Lee-Zimmermann.

The online survey will be conducted through a DNR license. The vendor is SurveyMonkey.

The spring hearings process will still include meetings on the second Monday in April in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties.

But unlike in the past, people can opt to attend a meeting in person or vote from home.

The online voting option will remain open for three days each April, Bonde said.

Local delegates will still be elected at the meetings and only people in physical attendance can vote for those positions. And citizen resolutions will be introduced only at the meeting sites.

To be included in county tallies, people who vote online will be required to provide their zip code. The WCC plans to conduct an annual review of the process and make any changes deemed necessary, Bonde said.

The issue took on added urgency over the last year as the equipment used to count votes was planned to be decommissioned after 2018.

But Bonde said the group could have continued using paper ballots and an alternative counting technique.

He said a majority of the group wanted to change. Bonde expressed the sentiment in terms of customer service and organizational survival.

"If you're in the business of gathering public opinion, and you only open your product to the customer for two hours a year at a limited number of locations, how long will you be in business if you don't change?" Bonde said.

It will be the first time online voting will be used in the WCC's 85-year history.

"I'm excited, I really am," Bonde said. "We'll watch it closely and make any needed changes, but I think this is a positive step for the congress."

Congress elections: The WCC Executive Committee was also selected at the group's 2018 convention.

Over the next year, the organization will be led by Larry Bonde of Kiel, chair; Mike Riggle of Medford, vice-chair; Dale Maas of Fox Lake, secretary; Joel Taylor of Ladysmith, outreach and public relations; and Joe Weiss of Spooner, historian.